Over the past month, this column has featured photos of the four Northern Pacific (N.P.) railway stations that served Kanaskat in southeast King County. The first Kanaskat depot was built in 1900, after N.P. constructed a new rail line that crossed the Green River from the Palmer station, about 1/2 mile to the south, and then headed west through Ravensdale and Covington en route to Auburn. After that original Victorian-style depot burned to the ground on Dec. 30, 1943, an ‘outfit’ car, normally used to house traveling maintenance workers was converted into a temporary rail depot. A proper brick station was built in 1946 and still stands in a state of disrepair. It was replaced by a duplicate depot in 1959 to accommodate construction of the Howard Hanson Dam seven miles upstream on the Green River.
This scale house, like similar structures which existed at other depot locations, was located directly across from the 1959 brick station. The apparatus was a Fairbanks-Morse track scale capable of weighing multiple carloads of commodities shipped by rail from Kanaskat. Four rails comprised of two sets of tracks, passed in front of these scale houses. The main tracks bypassed the scale allowing through movement of trains. Cars shunted to the side track by switching crews were individually weighed while momentarily still, followed by a succession of additional rail cars needing to be weighed. The station agent or night operators typically performed scaling duties. If they were busy, train crew members could step in and do the work.
Car weighing at Kanaskat was discontinued by N.P. in 1961. In 1967, the unused scale house was purchased by an employee, Dave Sprau, who provided much of the railroad information for this and previous columns. The purchase price was $20. It was skidded to the site of his mobile home about 300 feet distant and used for storage. That site, sans mobile home, can be seen near the trees at the far right of this Sept. 14, 1959, King County Assessor photo. In 1971, Sprau built a home on Sugarloaf Mountain near Kangley and moved there, “scale house and all.”
David Sprau began his career with N.P. on May 28, 1960. Nine years later, he joined the Great Northern Railway. The following year, 1970, those two railroads merged with Pacific Coast, Spokane, Portland & Seattle, and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroads to form Burlington Northern. To this day, its successor, Burlington Northern Santa Fe operates the rail lines passing by the spot where this scale house once stood.
During his 40 year career, Sprau was a telegraph operator, train dispatcher, locomotive fireman (engineer trainee), and later was superintendent of a short-line railroad which later became part of Tacoma Rail. Active in union affairs, he also served as Local Chairman for Seattle train dispatchers for several years, as well as Burlington Northern System General Chairman for the American Train Dispatchers’ Association from 1981 to 1983.
This scale house photo, one of several from King County Assessor tax parcel #102107-9020 comes courtesy of Puget Sound Regional Archives. Photo editing and colorization were undertaken by Doug ‘Boomer’ Burnham, a Tahoma high school instructor doing business as http://www.boomersphotography.com/
Next week we visit a Section Foreman’s home that Northern Pacific built in 1910, and still stands at its original location.
